it, and obeys it, will be most ready to receive the great passwords of religious faith. Happy the young man who in the morning of his years takes this simple and high wisdom as his guide, philosopher, and friend!

IV

Such is the ministry of Masonry to the individual-lifting him out of the mire and setting his feet in the long, white path marked out by the footsteps of ages; and through the individual it serves society and the state. If by some art one could trace those sweet, invisible influences which move to and fro like shuttles in a loom, weaving the net-work of laws, reverences, sanctities, which make the warp and woof of societygiving to statutes their dignity and power, to the gospel its opportunity, to the home its canopy of peace and beauty, to the young an enshrinement of inspiration, and the old a mantle of protection; if one had the pen of an angel then might one tell the story of what Masonry has done for Iowa. No wonder George Eliot said that eloquence is but a ripple on the bosom of the unspoken and the unspeakable!

What is it that so tragically delays the march of man toward that better social order whereof our prophets dream? Our age and land are full of schemes of every kind for the reform and betterment of mankind. Why do they not succeed? Some fail, perhaps, because they are imprudent and ill-considered, in that they expect too much of human nature and do not take into account the stubborn facts of life. But why does not the wisest and noblest plan do half what its devisers hope and pray and labor to bring about? Because there are not enough men fine enough of soul, large enough of sympathy, noble enough of nature to make the dream come true. So that when Masonry, instead of identifying itself with particular schemes of reform, devotes all its benign energy to refining and ennobling the souls of men, she is doing fundamental work in behalf of all high enterprises. By as much as she succeeds, every noble cause succeeds; if she fails, everything fails!

Recall what was passing before the eyes of men in this land fifty years ago to-day. What gloom, what uncertainty, what anxiety-Gettysburg less than a month away! The very life

of the republic hung in the balance! Think of those first three days of July, 1863, when fifty-four thousand young men, the flower of our future, lay dead and wounded-piled in heaps of blue and gray, quivering with pain, their white faces turned to the sky! Far away in northern towns and southern hamlets, sad-faced women heard, now with shrieks, now with dumb, unutterable woe, the long roll-call of the dead! What man who has a heart, or who cares for the future of his race, does not pray that such scenes may never again be witnessed on this earth! What can prevent a repetition of the horrors of war? Nothing but the growth in the hearts of men of the spirit of justice, freedom, and friendship which Masonry seeks, quietly, to evoke and inspire! If our fathers had known each other in the sixties as we know each other to-day, there would have been no Civil War! So it will be the world over, when man comes to know his fellow men as he learns to know them and love them at the altar of this order. Then shall be fulfilled the song of those who sang of "peace on earth among men of good-will!" Again, no one need be told that we are on the eve, if not in the midst, of a stupendous and bewildering revolution of social and industrial life. The questions in dispute can never be settled in an air of hostility. If they are settled at all, and settled right, it must be in an atmosphere of mutual recognition and respect such as that which Masonry strives to create and make prevail. Whether it be a conflict of nations, or a clash of class with class, appeal must be made to intelligence and the moral sense, as befits the dignity of man. Amidst bitterness and strife Masonry brings men of capital and labor, men of every rank and walk of life together as men, and nothing else, at an altar where they can talk and not fight, discuss and not dispute, and each may learn the point of view of his fellows. Other hope there is none save in this spirit of friendship and fairness, of democracy and the fellowship of man with man.

Even so it is in religion—that kingdom of faith and hope and prayer so long defamed by bigotry and distracted by sectarian feud. How many fine minds have been estranged from the altar of faith because they were required to believe what it was impossible for them to believe-and, rather than sacrifice their integrity, they turn away from the last place from which a man

should ever turn away. No part of the ministry of Masonry is more beautiful and wise than its appeal, not for tolerance, but for fraternity; not for uniformity, but for unity of spirit amidst varieties of outlook and opinion. God be thanked for one altar where no one is asked to surrender his liberty of thought and become an indistinguishable atom in a mass of sectarian agglomeration. What a witness to the worth of an order that it brings together men of all faiths in behalf of those truths which are greater than all sects, deeper than all dogmas-the glory and the hope of man!

When is a man a Mason? When he can look out over the rivers, the hills, and the far horizon with a profound sense of his own littleness in the vast scheme of things, and yet have faith, hope, and courage. When he knows that down in his heart every man is as noble, as vile, as divine, as diabolic, and as lonely as himself, and seeks to know, to forgive, and to love his fellow man. When he knows how to sympathize with men in their sorrows, yea, even in their sins-knowing that each man fights a hard fight against many odds. When he has learned how to make friends and to keep them, and above all how to keep friends with himself. When he loves flowers, can hunt the birds without a gun, and feels the thrill of an old forgotten joy when he hears the laugh of a little child. When he can be happy and high-minded amid the meaner drudgeries of life. When star-crowned trees and the glint of sunlight on flowing' waters subdue him like the thought of one much loved and long dead. When no voice of distress reaches his ears in vain, and no hand seeks his aid without response. When he finds good in every faith that helps any man to lay hold of higher things, and to see majestic meanings in life, whatever the name of that faith may be. When he can look into a wayside puddle and see something besides mud, and into the face of the most forlorn mortal and see something beyond sin. When he knows how to pray, how to love, how to hope. When he has kept faith with himself, with his fellow man, with his God; in his hand a sword for evil, in his heart a bit of a song-glad to live, but not afraid to die! In such a man, whether he be rich or poor, scholarly or unlearned, famous or obscure, Masonry has wrought her sweet ministry!

MEREDITH NICHOLSON

THE SUNNY SLOPES OF FORTY

Address delivered by the well-known novelist Meredith Nicholson at the public meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters held in Chicago, Nov. 15, 1913.

WE who gain the watershed of the years, no matter how humble our station or how flimsy our achievements, may be pardoned for loitering to throw out and reappraise the accumulations in our pack with a view to lightening the load for further traveling. Those who, climbing the ladder of the parallels toward the white North, pause at life's meridian to compare notes of their adventures, may still profit by criticism; whereas others who wait to cache the reflections of their senectitude in the polar ice, to be resurrected by later travelers, may commit themselves irrevocably to error. If we have gained the ridge in good spirits we are still able to fight back, and to defend ourselves from attack.

The sunny slopes of forty are those that dip down on the farther side of the Great Divide. Any one can see with half an eye that they are less precipitous than the geographers describe them. It appears from a cautious survey that by following the more deliberate streams that longest hold the heat of the sun we may delay appreciably our arrival at the polar waste. We are not of those who, having mislaid their charcoal tablets,

In disdainful silence turn away,

Stand mute, self-centered, stern, and dream no more.

We mean to give the official chloroformer a lively sprint before he overtakes us. We shall fool the world as long as we Copyright by the American Academy and printed with its special permission.

can by keeping our trousers pressed and flaunting the bravest neckwear the haberdasher affords. By tacking a new collar to our spring overcoat and shaking out the moth balls we may carry it—thrown indifferently over the arm as though we never expect to use it-a long way into November.

Those of us who have reached the great watershed certainly cannot complain of the fate that launched us on our pilgrimage in the last half of the nineteenth century. The drama has never been dull and we have watched the course of many excellent players. An imaginative boy, born in the later sixties, could still hear the bugles and the clash of arms. Throughout this midwestern country every hearthside had its Iliad. Now and then, within my own recollection, there appeared at the doorstep men who, unable to redomesticate themselves after four years of camp and field, still clung to the open road. How long the faded old army overcoat hung together-and on how many shoulders it became an advertisement of valor, an asset, a plea for alms! Having been denied the thrills of war itself it was no small compensation to look upon its heroes-to observe daily in the street men who had commanded armies, to attend those gatherings of veterans that so brightly visualized for curious youth the magnitude of the great struggle of the sixties. If one's father had been of the mighty legion; if there existed in the garret a musket or a sword that he had borne in the conflict; if there remained, in a soap-box under the eaves, the roster of his company, an order or a report or a bundle of old letters, for inspection on rainy days, the luckier the lad to whom such memorabilia came as a birthright. It is inconceivable that any boy born in those times could have escaped the fascination of those heroes, whether he sat at meat with them daily in his own household, or saw them in the streets with the stamp of the drill sergeant still upon them. And nothing was so impressive as the fact that they had flung down their youth as the gage of battle.

We are none of us without our wistful tenderness for those who won "the immortal youthfulness of the early dead":

Shelley and Keats, with laurels fresh and fair,

Shining unwithered on each sacred head;

And soldier boys who snatched death's starry prize,